Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good evening, members of the committee. Thank you for having us here.
I am Jean-Pierre Perreault, president of Acfas and Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies, at the Université de Sherbrooke.
Our century-old association, Acfas, brings together French-speaking researchers in Canada. Our study entitled "Portrait et défis de la recherche en français en contexte minoritaire au Canada" reveals that French-speaking researchers represent 21 per cent of the research community in Canada, but that only half of them make their grant applications to the federal granting councils in French.
In my own discipline, biochemistry and RNA, I would not even dare to think I would be successful if I submitted an application in French. There are three main reasons for that.
First, the granting councils have often had a poor reputation when it comes to how they treat applications in French. The evaluators assess their own level of bilingualism, and some of them do not completely understand the francophone application they are reading, and so some francophone researchers have received comments from certain granting councils, explaining the denial of funding for their project, that made no sense.
The success rate for applications submitted in French is lower than for applications submitted in English. This entire situation has led to distrust on the part of French-speaking researchers. There is therefore work to be done at the federal granting councils to reverse the trend and regain these researchers' confidence.
Second, in minority situations, many francophone researchers work at anglophone universities, where it is simply not possible to submit an application in French, because the university would not be able to understand it. One of the reasons why Acfas wants to create a new service to assist research in French in Canada is to get through this blockade.
Third, along with those reasons, there is obviously the international context of research, where English is the common language.
From the perspective of learned publications and presentations in French, the data from our study show a clear and definite decline. Our respondents, who are all from Canadian francophone minority communities, say that they publish in English to reach a broader audience, to be cited more often, to have better chances of getting grands, and to advance their career. English is also the language of a majority of prestigious scholarly journals, and this carries considerable weight in a researcher's curriculum vitae.
It is essential to have a common language in research. That being said, we must not forget the local situation. There is knowledge to be transmitted to our community and a francophone vocabulary to be developed for disseminating this research. Francophone scholarly journals also play a crucial role in developing that vocabulary.
We cannot just place the blame on the international research environment to explain the decline we are experiencing. As I said earlier, there is a lack of confidence in the granting councils in Canada. There is also a lack of financing for scholarly journals, scientific activities in French and groups that provide leadership in these communities. And last, there is a lack of recognition.
We need to expand the criteria based on which a researcher is valued in Canada. And we need to acknowledge that there are a number of profiles of professor/researchers and they are all as excellent as one another. Some researchers use their experience not only to advance knowledge, but also to advance their society, for example by advising community groups or having local study subjects to respond to specific concerns in their community, for example. In my opinion, valuing them less simply because their research has no international impact makes no sense.
Before concluding, I would like to note that what we are calling for is part of an international movement for multilingualism in research brought about by the Helsinki Initiative.
I would point out that I am accompanied by Prof. Anne-José Villeneuve, from Alberta, who manages two scholarly journals, one francophone and the other bilingual, and Laura Pelletier, project manager at Acfas.
We will be pleased to answer your questions. Thank you for your attention.